To M. Stephens

"I see your hair is burning.." -M. Mojo Rising, 1971 It is often said that Books Don't Write Themselves. Books Don't write. Period. Throw in an Emoji. The Great American Novel isn't printed on a page. It is written in the bodies and blood of every man, woman and child. It's scrawled in shorthand by scars, punctuated by scabs and bad teeth and abbreviated by long pauses. It's a weighted volume and it would take you a very long time to finish, indeed. Some Have died trying to add that last punctuation mark. And many stories burned from a straying cigarette butt. "The cat knocked my coffee over." I've chased The Great American Novel, and i lost it somewhere when i was asleep. But when i woke up, i realized that it is not a white buffalo, it is not a memorial; and it certainly cannot be printed: The Great American Novel is tattooed in India ink, bad haircuts, painted across the streets crowned by public housing towers and litter-strewn public parks. Auto shops and Grocery stores, all the way to banks and Clean Houses that smell like carpet shampoo, where the sounds of the television news cover desperate teenage fumbling in His room upstairs. The great American Novel is not an elusive creature. You stalk it's footfalls in the reflection of a stream, you check out your new haircut in it's eyes. You hand it a tip for the cab. It puts your money in a 401k and goes home to it's own private hell. It surprises you with warm apple pie, a pregnancy: THE TRUTH. The Great American Novel cannot be written. The Great American Novel walks on two legs. The Great American Novel is you, and it's me; too. It's quite a read, and The End will blow your mind.

My Way Or The Thai Way

"i am an agent of chaos. go and spread a little anarchy."
-the joker

it is bangkok. it is hot. i am wide awake in my guest house at six in the morning swigging on a bottle of whiskey i had purchased last night. four hours ago some thai girl beat me in the head with a wooden umbrella because i rejected her advances. i oafishly sweep down the stairs to the family who maintain my lodging and pull on sandals while trying to not look hungover. i am on my way to buy chicken satay and chocolate milk for breakfast. the matron of the house thinks that i am ridiculous. her children are into hip-hop and one drunken night (they all were) i introduced them to the 3-6 mafia and we stayed up late watching eminem videos. i sit on the free computer at the israeli place for a half hour talking to my girlfriend. maybe today i will go to the mall and walk around. ladyboys roam the streets here at night and slash people with scalpels for money. i met a british man here on my first night who had been slashed four times. his thai wife has his child and she is addicted to methamphetamine. he breaks glass in public and screams at her. i drink another chocolate milk and eat dog for lunch before meeting up with the off duty police, random local riff-raff and career criminals that i hang out with at our favorite open-air bar, popiang. a man tries to fight me because he is a loud american tourist and does not like me because of the way i look. he is from rhode island and hanging out with a hooker who sent a young kid to thai jail for not buying her drinks or supplying her with his cigarettes. he will be locked up for at least 6 months because she knew that he had marijuana in his room. her john that night landed chest-first on his bottle of whiskey that he had been drinking as he stumbled from his seat to fight me. there was blood everywhere. the hooker stole his wallet and ran. i stood laughing and went somewhere else. now i am waking up fingering the mechanical wheels of a child's toy replicating a moto-taxi and thinking of travel north. to which, i do. i did travel to nong khai. i traveled with an irishman who couldn't drink korean rice whiskey and puked all over our train seats. he got us kicked out of our guest house because he was too loud and would bring bar girls home. i awoke to see him fucking some total dog one night. put in the headphones, go to sleep. he had an awesome girlfrien in bangkok but he settled for whatever came along. i got fucked up with her and a bunch of thais and passed out on the floor because it was too far to walk home. i stole a police officer's badge and almost got arrested. i escaped a strip club by the skin of my teeth. i was stopped by the police for looking like a gang member 3 times. i saw a kickboxing fight at the end of my street. i can die happy.

Meatloaf And I.

I was nineteen and living in Ashford, Connecticut. There's nothing in Ashford but a gas station and the Ku Klux Klan. Being a young punk rocker with pink hair and spikey wrist bands, i couldn't get a job at the gas station and i sure as shit wanted nothing to do with the Klan so i spent my time in the next town over
Storrs is the home of the University Of Connecticut. It was here where i would drop acid with puppetry majors, hang out with a crazy ex-navy seal at a pizza restaurant watching re-runs of the Simpsons, preen over GG Allin records at the local music store and lurk outside of the Store 24 bumming cigarettes and change.
One spring day i was sitting in front of this terrible collegiate bar called "Husky Blues," reading a few 25 cent comic books and trying to get a smoke off of whoever ventured into the bar. Then he came like a bat out of hell.
A motorcycle roared into the back parking lot, about ten feet where i sat propped against the wall. A largish man dismounted and removed his helmet, politely nodded to me and walked inside. He had an air of charisma about him, but at the time i thought nothing of it. I was some dirty punk on the street and this guy was probably a bartender or a professor. I went back to reading Ninja High School.
After about a beer's worth of time, the bar door opened and our ghost rider steps out into the balmy air and surveys the desolate parking lot before settling his gaze upon me. with a perplexed look, he asked me; "are you in a band that's playing here tonight?"
Tickled that he recognized me as a musician (i was in a band called Projectile Vomit at the time,) i coyly answered "no". Then he gave a disgruntled shrug towards the bar and said, "well that's good, because honestly, the looks they gave me in there i can guarantee they're definitely not going to like your ass in there."
We both laughed, and he asked me what i was reading. I showed this charming man my comic books which he thumbed through while fishing a Marlboro red out of the breast pocket of his leather jacket and i asked him if i could have one, to which he graciously answered; "Of Course."
He light my cigarette and saddled up his pony before saying "have a good day" and taking off. I smoked down to the filter and made my way back to Ashford without really thinking about anything besides getting down with a few puffs of mary jane and drinking some orange juice.
Flash forward one month later. My girlfriend Rachael and i were big fans of VH-1's "Behind The Music" series. We watched it all the time. This time the focus was on Meatloaf. The second the camera showed a current interview with Mr. Loaf, my mind imploded. It was HIM. The man on the motorcycle who leafed through comics with me and graciously bummed me a cigarette before hauling ass into the spring afternoon. Fucking Meatloaf. Adding to this, VH-1 reported that he lived in Hebron, Connecticut and enjoys riding his motorcycle and coaching his daughter's little league team. Hebron is two towns over. He was on a day-ride (a "milk run," as bikers call it) and stopped off for a beer.
Say what you will about the man, but Meatloaf was fucking cool. I wonder if he remembers the skinny dirty kid with pink hair sitting outside the college bar reading comic books and bumming smokes. When/if he dies, i'm going to leave a pack of Marlboros on his grave.
Ride on, brother.

i was a teenage landlord, part two.

so anyway, as i was saying. after our first show (what i lovingly refer to as "the saint swithins day massacre") we began to attract the attention of a small independent label called Micro Earth records. we were offered a contract. we laughed. so on a nice spring day three of us drove out to the office with a gallon of rum in tow.
we reviewed the contract and i slit my finger open with a knife and dipped the tip into my blood and signed on the line. jay beamed at this and followed suit. brett couldn't bring himself to slice his thumb and wanted me to do it. well, i cut him a little too deep and he bled all over the office. but not before signing his name. i believe he may still have a photocopy of the bloodstained contract. kai was not present at the meeting and although he signed, it was not in blood. afterward, we celebrated. i ate a xanax and fell down. i awoke with a terrible hangover and my bedsheet stuck to my elbow, which was crusted with blood from my fall.
it was also at this time that we began to reap the rivalry that we had sown. one day as i was running a delivery up to smith college, john peter's roomate jay ponti literally jumped out of the bushes and punched me in the arm and yelled "what's up?!" in my face. oh yeah. i forgot that i spraypainted "LANDLORDS!" on the wall next to their house. i told him that we are not fucking around, and if he wants to get in my face then he had better do it when i'm not on the clock.
it seems that john peter, in some "i'm an artist" moment had become frustrated during a fucking sparklies practice and spraypainted "CONCENTRATE" above the toilet. the toilet broke and now the landlord would not only see the spraypaint in the loo, but also my modern art masterpiece outside. i guess they painted over the bathroom because i moved into the same house two years later and it was gone. my graffiti is still there. but anyway, ha ha.
after the incident with jay ponti, our band rivalry hit a fork in the road. jay ponti was in a terrible cock rock band called The Holics. they wanted desperately to be The Unband. in fact, they asked my friend matt pierce from The Unband to sing for them. he went to a rehearsal and he told me that they laminate their lyric sheets. because jay and john peter lived together and promoted shows together, he naturally joined rank in john peter's anti-landlord campaign. The Holics had this song called "what the fuck." the chorus was such a rip off of "panama" by van halen that we would laugh about it. they said "what the fuck" instead of "panama." lame. so when we played the northampton music festival, we ridiculed The Holics on stage. we even broke down one of our songs in the middle and did the break in "panama." you know, "i think we're running a little bit hot tonight..." i was wearing a tiny pair of smith college running shorts and nothing else. brett and i did whippets onstage. at one point The Holics were at the front of the stage trying to fuck with us. we didn't let them get a word in edgewise. they tried to take my mic stand and i kicked it over on them, followed with a gob of spit. one of them threw a bottle and it broke on my guitar. a shard of glass cut my thigh and a trickle of blood flowed down to my sock. i kept playing. as we were packing up we looked for The Holics but they were nowhere to be found.
a week later we recorded our one and only EP, "freddy and the landlords pay the fucking rent." i handled the art. the front cover is a photo of the four of us standing next to a dumpster. there was a car accident when our friend courtney was shooting the photos and brett and i are staring at it. the mix sounds dirty tinny and raw but i liked it. we did minimal overdubs. there were 3 songs on the record but we recorded more. i doubt that these will ever see the light.
that summer it felt like the world was ours. a couple of bands around town were covering "pay the rent," and matt pierce wanted to produce our next single. we played huge college parties that would get shut down by the police. jay started hanging out with a groupie. he didn't see it that way. she would eventually work her way through the whole band minus me. i had a girlfriend. then again, so did jay. after a while kai realised that brett was sleeping with her although kai had some notion that he and her were dating. needless to say this shook things up and we were in limbo. limbo turned to decay. although we rarely practiced, now we NEVER practiced. we didn't even hang out together. well, me and kai did because we lived together.
a final show was planned and all of our friends were there. it was videotaped and we made a live recording of it which, due to contractual obligations cannot be released by the band. freddy and the landlords left some memories of great times and a few heavy frustrations but if i could do it all over i wouldn't change a stinking, drugged-out, chewing on a gas station burrito moment of it.

i was a teenage landlord. (or- how i stopped worrying and learned to love Da Bomb.) PART 1

in the spring thaw of 2002 i had established myself in the pioneer valley town of northampton, massachusetts and on one drunken evening laid in the wet grass of smith college's athletic field getting stoned with my roomate and talked about starting a rock and roll band to lay waste to the sub-indie pop shitcrust that was known as "The Fucking Sparklies."
"we should play five songs in a row that all sound like johnny b. goode," i laughed through a THC haze. brett and i chuckled. we had been henchmen for a show promoter in northampton named john peter. at the time we were desperate and out of work, having been fired from a yuppie pasta restaurant due to being "loose cannons." the guy we worked for hardly paid us in beer despite the fact that we had made a maximum effort of advertising his functions by walking down the street in sandwich boards and vigorously flyering for his poorly attended gigs at the eagle's nest. he treated us like his slaves, getting wasted and tackling us to the ground attempting to beat us up at after parties for his shitty cock rock shows.
when i first moved to massachusetts i wanted nothing more to do with playing music. it frustrated me. i had dabbled with everything, lastly on suicide-style synth noise. i was done. until i saw abel ferrara's 1979 punk slasher flick; "driller killer." the story of an artist living with his two girlfriends struggling to make it. a punk rock band called Tony Coca Cola and The Roosters moves downstairs driving the painter insane. then he kills homeless people with a drill. the roosters inspired me and i wanted to start a trashy rock group.
maybe two weeks later while acting as street crew for The Fucking Sparklies, we ended up at what i could only describe as a drug party that they were playing. it was at a known junkie's house, everyone was smoking pot and doing coke and The Fucking Sparklies were busy sucking in the basement. brett and i sat across from a guy we knew from the cigarette shop and a guy from a record store talking about the new york dolls and passing a joint. one of those cheap ones with the wire in the paper for those who don't know how to roll.
Kai expounded on his life philosophy; "SLEAZE is the only way to LIVE!" brett and i silently nodded our heads. a philosophy that would soon drag us by the neck from a pickup truck.
a week or so afterwards, brett and i were serious about starting frankie and the landlords (which through some drunken slobber had now become freddy and the landlords.) we accosted kai to sing for us. kai is what happens when you put tom metzger, marc bolan, and ray liota into one body. a totally pompous ass but you have to like him even if he doesn't shut the fuck up. and he is a very generous and kind person when his mouth does shut. he told us that the fella he was hanging out with was a drummer. score.
we rehearsed in kai's basement but were reasonably evicted. there was a practice space behind a shopping center. you would pay 15 dollars an hour and they already had most of the drums, amplifiers and cables on hand. one night after drinking about two cases of black label, we brought another two to the space and set up. i had some ideas from previous practices and in half an hour we had three songs.
before we had ever played a note, we had gone to great lengths to advertise our band by spray painting "LANDLORDS!" everywhere (including the back stairwell of our own apartment) after doing whippets on the train tracks and shotgunning pissy beer behind our hideout above a chinese restaurant. in fact; the fellow john peter was supposedly a little freaked out that i had started a god's-honest-rival band. a month previous he had played with the idea of a rival group to The Fucking Sparklies and now it had reared it's ugly head. we spread rumors that we would open the first gig with our "secret weapon lead singer" cutting through a large blowup of john peter's face and starting the show. an idea i had stolen from Rocket From The Tombs.
we gained a bit of respect from day one when we claimed that we would destroy bullshit northampton bands. and although we did not entirely succeed, i think that we had certainly made a dent in our brief career.
hype in place, we played our first show at a bar called harry's. watch for that name because it's going to come up a lot. freddy and the landlords played with some shitty boston street punk band who called john peter out, on stage. he was standing at the bar looking nervous. we had already won. the band took the stage. this was in my glam days and i was wearing a tight leopard print shirt, a pink feather boa and a gas mask. we ripped through our set about nazi strippers, lesbians, truck stop trannies, callous sex, kai's dick and stopped to a screeching halt that moved the party to our apartment. before the cops came.
the next day we felt like gods. our next show was scheduled at a chinese restaurant the next town over with a few local acts. i had just got out of work and i was hanging out with our 65 year old manager, bart, who had just handed me a fist full of speed. i was wearing a replica of a west german army jacket and he was giving me shit for it as i chased my amphetamines with barley wine. time to go to the show. by the time we had arrived i was fucking plastered. i sat at the bar with a cocktail in my hand; yelling "where the fuck is my nazi jacket?!" our manager was a french jew. somehow i plugged in and "tuned up" and we went into our set. during lulls i would tell terrible dirty jokes. in fact i'm told we played the same song a few times in a row. i fell backwards onto the high hat. i still have a scar and it is on silent film that i will never see.
suddenly we had a deal with a minor label. a contractual affair. (to be continued..)

Shot From Both Sides.

i was about eighteen. my friends mark, erin and bombo (R.I.P.) are hanging out in a dorm room in willimantic connecticut and they're talking about going out to the old train trestle that rears thirty feet above the willimantic river to take some arty photos. i'd been there a few times- in my politico days i went to the same spot with my friend shannon to snap photos of AGWAY's illegal dumping of fertilizer in the river. not that the willimantic river isn't already filthy. there are two tracks- one in use, and the other had not been used since american thread was closed in the seventies.
a footnote- i am both acrophobic and i cannot swim. methinks these are closely related.
we walked across the trestle while i tried not to look down. i get really bad vertigo. one by one we climbed down to the cement base embedded in the floor of the river. they had hidden a TOBACCO SMOKING DEVICE there previously and proceeded to get interesting. i at the time did not dabble in these things and stared into the cold water of the spring thaw as erin took some arty black and white photos.
once the art was over it was time to get on back to campus and as everyone climbed up to the top of the tracks, vertigo overtook me. i couldn't do it. i hunched down on the pylon and panicked. i couldn't jump into the river and swim across- for one, the water was freezing and the current would pull me out (aside from the fact that i still CANNOT SWIM) and also i was panicking because i am still quite terrified of heights.
what to do? my friends were already standing on the river bank, stoned and making fun of me. creeps. what i decided to do was this, and i wish i had never done it ever.
the inside ledge of the trestle was about seven inches wide, with crossbeams every eight feet. i was about forty feet from shore. i slowly pressed my back against the steel wall, with the river roaring below. my heart was pounding as though i was going to have an overdose of methamphetamine. i was sweating buckets in thirty five degree weather. keeping my eyes on my feet and moving VERY SLOWLY i crept, step after step along the rail. most of my feet overlapped the overhang as my ratty mohawk flapped in the wind. i was shaking and i tried not to look down. to say that i was scared would be an understatement. i was almost crying. i made it to the first crossbeam as my compatriots sang "just like heaven" by the cure. i could smell the waste in the water and it nauseated me. the rail was slick and i could feel the lack of friction between my combat boots and the steel. next crossbeam. hold on for dear life and brace myself against the wall. i'm staring at greatful dead graffiti. who the fuck would come this far out above death for fun? the dirty water raced over jagged rocks below. i felt sick. i unzipped my leather jacket and sweated a little more. i was jeered from the shore but i ignored it. i was literally the snail crawling across the razorblade, as said in apocalypse now. if i fell, i died. painfully, i could see the bank just about ten feet away but i crawled about twelve inches a minute. sweat rolled down my brow and stung my eyes and i had to stop as i wavered on the precipice. within five feet of shore i jumped about ten feet down, bowing my legs as i hit dry land to the applause of my comrades and noticed a few dirty needles not too far away. never again.